The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 530

Chapter 530: Two Bombs He Didn’t Tell Her About

After hours of fighting, the thing that was going to take Gavriel Sterling down wasn’t a death temple or a lava serpent or a vampire’s claws. It was something he didn’t tell anyone about when it happened.

She eased him onto the moss-covered ledge beside the pool, pulling him out of the water, laying him down on the soft green surface that lined the stone like nature had grown a gurney specifically for this moment.

Her hands trembled against his chest. His heartbeat was fast. Too fast. Hammering against her palm like it was trying to escape.

She felt his forehead first. He was fever-hot. The kind of temperature that burned against her fingers and made her stomach drop into her boots because outside of herself, wolves don’t run fevers. That meant something was terribly wrong.

"Shit."

She reached for the zipper at the back of his combat suit, fingers fumbling twice before catching the pull, and dragged it down between his shoulder blades. She peeled the fabric away from his shoulders, the thermal weave separating from his skin with a wet, clinging resistance, steam rising from his exposed back as the cave air hit flesh that was radiating heat like a furnace.

Then she froze.

There was a bitemark on his shoulder.

Fresh. Deep. The kind of wound that looked like it had opinions about staying. Black veins fanned outward from the puncture in a slow, deliberate crawl, threading beneath his skin like dark roots searching for something to strangle.

Her breath left her in a strangled gasp.

"Oh gods."

Hyran and Aeron both warned that vampire bites are fatal to wolves. Full stop. Period. The end. No asterisk, no footnote, no ’unless you try really hard and believe in yourself.’ Fatal.

She had never read any texts on vampires herself, so that was all she had to go off of.

That’s when she noticed her own shoulder was aching.

She ripped the zipper of her training suit down, peeling the suit off her torso, and looked down at her shoulder.

A black mark was forming across her skin in the same goddamn spot, a perfect mirror. The only difference between their marks was his had dark veins spidering outward and she didn’t.

That’s when her eyes caught something on his other shoulder.

A mark. Glowing gold against his skin, faint but unmistakable, pulsing with the same rhythm as his heartbeat. She knew that glow. She had seen it on Dexmon’s shoulder. She had seen it on Fin’s.

Her blood went cold.

She stared at it, waiting for the image to change, waiting for it to be a trick of the pink light or the steam or her own exhaustion feeding her hallucinations she couldn’t afford. It didn’t change. It sat on his skin like it belonged there.

Had she marked Gavriel?

Her stomach bottomed out.

No. No, no, no.

When did she do this? How? She searched her memory and came back empty.

Serena: Aurelia.

Silence.

Serena: I know you can hear me. Answer me. Did we mark him?

Serena: Hyran, Aeron, is anyone there?

Serena: Gav was bitten. Tell me what I can do.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify